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The Obama administration moved today to resume high-level relations with Moscow when Hillary Clinton led a western push to revive contacts between Russia and Nato.Making her European debut as secretary of state, Clinton told a meeting of Nato foreign ministers that Washington wanted "a fresh start" in relations with Moscow.

"I don't think you punish Russia by stopping conversation with them," she said, adding that there could be benefits to the better relationship. "We not only can but must co-operate with Russia."

The meeting in Brussels agreed to reinstate the work of the Nato-Russia council, a consultative body that was frozen last year in protest at Moscow's invasion and partition of Georgia.

Officials in Berlin now face the question of what went wrong. The operation lasted for three weeks, at a cost to the German treasury well in excess of the combined ransom payments of recent years. The failed campaign demonstrated that without improved logistics and available aircraft and ships, the GSG-9 is incapable of operating swiftly enough in comparable situations.

For the team at the Foreign Ministry, preventing the pirates from reaching Harardere was of paramount importance, because they would likely receive reinforcement there. There was no time to be wasted, and for Silberberg, the situation was clear: "As long as there are only five pirates on board, we can attack and bring a speedy end to the matter." Hanning's staff assured him that the GSG-9 team could be ready for deployment at the nearest secure port, Mombasa, within 96 hours -- a very short time frame for an operation of this magnitude. But, as it turned out, it would take the pirates only 24 hours to reach Harardere.

The torture virus eventually infected the rest of the world, including Europe and even Germany. The double standard employed by German counterterrorism personnel when confronted with the torture practices of their US allies becomes clear in a remark Ernst Uhrlau, the head of the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, made in a 2007 interview with SPIEGEL: "US officials have (…) explained to us that the information they gained from various interrogations worldwide has been instrumental in preventing further attacks and uncovering terrorist structures. So we have benefited from all this in the sense of preventing attacks and understanding the structures of the network."

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble also found it difficult to distance himself from the use of dirty information, saying that it was perfectly legitimate for German officials to use information foreign intelligence agencies had obtained through torture -- after all, that helped prevent terror attacks. At the same time, Schäuble was apparently unwilling to consider the possibility that this might also apply to American intelligence agencies: "The president has made it clear that there is no torture. I have no reason to question that."

The entire world looked the other way when the United States committed a crime that the world had previously committed itself to outlaw and punish.

Polish media and politicians have sharply criticized this week's SPIEGEL cover story about Hitler's European helpers outside of Germany. They believe the article is part of an attempt by Germans to foist guilt for its own Nazi crimes off on others.

"DER SPIEGEL is accusing Poland and other nations of having assisted in the Holocaust," claims the daily Polska. In the future, the polemic continues, SPIEGEL could come to the conclusion that the Jews, too, assisted -- after all, there were Jewish police in the ghettos who were forced by the Nazis to round up men, women and children for the transports to the concentration camps.

t is particularly hurtful to Poles that SPIEGEL also reported about the so-called "Szmalcownicy," Poles who revealed their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis or extorted money from Jewish families in hiding in exchange for silence. Sometimes they even did both.

  Print  | E-Mail  | Share  | Feedback 05/26/2009 Digg Stumble Upon Reddit Facebook Del.icio.us Fark Yahoo Newsvine Google MySpace   Font: CULTURE WARS An Anti-Semite for UNESCO? Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni is a leading candidate to take over UNESCO in the fall. An alliance of intellectuals and Jewish groups from France, Germany and Israel are up in arms over the possibility due to remarks made by him perceived to be anti-Israeli.

Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni is a leading candidate to take over UNESCO in the fall. An alliance of intellectuals and Jewish groups from France, Germany and Israel are up in arms over the possibility due to remarks made by him perceived to be anti-Israeli.

Hosni, an artist by trade, has been Egypt's Culture Minister since 1987. He is known for being a liberal voice in Egyptian politics, opposing the veil for Egyptian women for example. But he has also made anti-Israeli statements in the past. Last year, he said he would "burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries."

"Spreading anarchy and vandalism by Western powers and also Western media...these are not at all accepted," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told a news conference in comments translated by Iran's English-language Press TV. "In many European countries and also in America, instead of inviting people to resort to democratic mechanisms...they support parts of the rioters," he said. Advertisement Asked whether expelling some foreign ambassadors was an option, Qashqavi said he would neither confirm nor deny this as Iran was still studying possible action.

He also said Iranian diplomatic missions had been damaged during election-related protests in other countries, including Germany. "We don't think that anybody would be able to attack a diplomatic center without the government and local police being informed," he said.

The European Union said Sunday that Iran has summoned diplomats from EU member countries to protest what it says is interference in its internal affairs.

SPIEGEL: Do you think it was helpful for Obama to deliver a speech to the Islamic world in Cairo? Or has he created a lot of illusions about what politics can deliver? Kissinger: Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening. Now he's got to play his hand as he plays his various counterparts. We haven't gotten beyond the opening game move yet. I have no quarrel with the opening move.

Kissinger: It is also too early to say that. If what he wants to do is convey to the Islamic world that America has an open attitude to dialogue and is not determined on physical confrontation as its only strategy, then it can play a very useful role. If it were to be continued on the belief that every crisis can be managed by a philosophical speech, then he will run into Wilsonian problems.

SPIEGEL: Obama did not only hold a speech. At the same time, he placed pressure on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Kissinger: The outcome can only be a two-state solution, and there seems to be substantial agreement on the borders of such a state.

we have no time to lose. Let's hope that people will have realized by December that the financial crisis is a prime example of unsustainable economies, and that we should protect the planet from suffering a similar blow to the one currently afflicting the global economy. I'm actually quite optimistic that investments that save resources, save energy and are green, while at the same time making life less costly and our economy more competitive will pick up speed tremendously.

SPIEGEL: There was little evidence of that at the G-20 summit. Gabriel: At least the participants moved a passage on stabilizing the economy in an environmentally responsible way to the front of their closing statement. Half a year ago, those words would have been inconceivable. But there was a lack of concretion, and that was weak. The G-20 will have to correct this deficiency before Copenhagen, or things will be more than difficult.

SPIEGEL: Doesn't an environment minister have to scrutinize the consumption behavior and lifestyle of citizens, even at the risk of not making any friends in the process? Gabriel: Should I come up with something like (former Environment Minister) Jürgen Trittin's can deposit program, which led to a boom in disposable packaging? Now there's a case of maximum unpopularity coupled with maximum damage! I also don't think much of puritanically suggesting to people that they exercise restraint. That doesn't cause the auto industry to modify its engines. And we didn't solve the waste problems of the 1980s with non-consumption, but by charging a price for waste and developing ways to avoid waste or recycle. We consume more today than we did then, and yet we produce drastically less waste. The limits of growth as a political message have failed worldwide.

Why do you not at least temporarily suspend uranium enrichment, thereby laying the groundwork for the commencement of serious negotiations?

Ahmadinejad: These discussions are outdated. The time for that is over. The 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement support us unanimously, as do the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. If we eliminate duplication between the two groups, we have 125 countries that are on our side. If a few countries are opposed to us, you certainly cannot claim that this is the entire world.

The composition of the Security Council and the veto of its five permanent members are consequences of World War II, which ended 60 years ago. Must the victorious powers dominate mankind for evermore, and must they constitute the world government? The composition of the Security Council must be changed.

A controversial UN conference on racism has begun in Geneva, amid concern it could become an anti-Semitic forum. Several countries - including the US, Australia and Germany - are boycotting it but France and the UK are attending.

Iran's president, who has denied the Holocaust, is to address the meeting, a follow-up to a 2001 UN forum in Durban that ended in acrimony.

many Western countries are uncomfortable with the address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only major leader to accept an invitation to the forum.

By Friday evening, when Turkey repeated its threat to veto any decision to appoint Rasmussen as the next secretary general, it became clear that a NATO summit being held to celebrate its 60th anniversary threatened to end in fiasco.

But Turkey had been the only country that objected to Rasmussen's selection to head the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Detractors of the Dane, led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, felt Rasmussen was unsuitable for the post because he had been unyielding in the dispute over the Muhammad caricatures and preferred to defend the right to free speech rather than apologize.

The remaining 27 NATO members, especially Germany, France and the United States, all offered their clear backing for Rasmussen, but the summit remained a suspenseful one. The reason being that one of the many peculiar rules of the alliance is that the secretary general must be unanimously elected, meaning that Turkey actually did have the power to reject the choice.

SPIEGEL: The economic crisis has severely damaged the economic model of finance-driven turbo-capitalism. Will this lead to a renaissance in the state economy? Stiglitz: I don't think so. The fall of the Berlin Wall really was a strong message that communism does not work as an economic system. The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15th again showed that unbridled capitalism doesn't work either.

SPIEGEL: Could authoritarian systems like in China be the future? Stiglitz: Besides the two extremes of communism and capitalism, there are alternatives, such as Scandinavia or Germany. The Chinese model has succeeded very well for their people, but at the price of democratic rights. The German social model, however, has worked very well. It could also be a model for the US administration.

SPIEGEL: The opposition in Germany is already complaining about government stimulus funding for infrastructure in developing countries. Stiglitz: All the more reason for governments to persuade their people that it is in our own interest that all national economies grow. If banks in Eastern Europe collapse, it weakens Western European banks and then American financial institutions. If we are to learn one thing from the economic crisis, it's this: Globalization can't be stopped. It has to be managed or else the global economy won't work.

When President Barack Obama comes to London next week, he will find one great power missing at the world's summit table: Europe. Five of the 20 leaders at the G20 meeting will be Europeans, representing France, Germany, Britain, Italy and the EU, but the whole will be less than the sum of its parts. There will be plenty of Europeans but no Europe.

Obama's European trip, which continues to the Nato summit and then an EU-US meeting in Prague, will also be about foreign and security policy. Here, Europe is even less of a single player. To be fair, Europeans have got their act together on diplomacy with Iran, though it remains to be seen whether that European unity would survive an American request for more economic sanctions on Tehran. On most of the other big issues on Obama's agenda - Afghanistan, Pakistan, relations with Russia and China, nuclear proliferation - there is no Europe. There are individual European countries.

Unlike George W Bush at the beginning of his first term, President Obama is both ideologically and pragmatically predisposed to work with a stronger, more united Europe. But even he can't work with something that doesn't exist.

The European Union’s crisis of leadership during the economic downturn was thrown into sharp relief on Wednesday, as the current president of the 27-nation bloc labeled President Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

What made the situation even more trying for those who hope that the European Union might find a common voice in this crisis was that Mr. Topolanek’s own governing coalition collapsed on Tuesday. The Czech opposition party, which favors bigger increases in domestic spending during the slump, won a no-confidence vote on his leadership.

Despite widespread fears that European nations could prolong the current recession unless they act in concert with one another and the United States, the slump has highlighted differences over deficit spending, interest rates and possible bailouts for new union members in the East. There are few signs that the alliance is developing the political leadership to match its economic weight.Britain, like the United States, has undertaken an aggressive fiscal stimulus and slashed interest rates. But Germany and France have opposed calls for further large stimulus packages and even greater deficit spending, while the European Central Bank has kept interest rates higher than they are in the United States and Britain. Germany and even some Central European countries opposed calls by Hungary for the creation of a single rescue fund for heavily indebted countries in Eastern Europe.